An 8 Hour Diet

Scientists have been starving mice and rats for years now to see how it effects their lifespans.  Calorie restriction seems to do something good for the rodents, as they live a lot longer than animals allowed to eat as much and as often as they like.  Fasting has been around for a long time as well.  Over the years I have followed countless gurus telling me countless things to improve my life, my soul, and my general place in the universe-most of them recommend meditation and several are big on fasting.  So I have gone through times where I would fast for one day a week-one day isn’t too hard, it’s the longer fasts that tend to do me in.

I found the 8 Hour Diet when I was reading a book called Brain Trust.  The idea here is that you restrict you eating to an 8 hour window in the day and allow your body to recover from the job of eating for 16 hours a day.  It seems that the liver needs this time to chill out and there are some chemical changes going on.  The article in the book was pretty short, but it sounded convincing to me.  I’ve been eating in an 8 hour window from 10 AM to 6 PM for the past 6 weeks or so.  I miss the window a bit here and there as I can be busy at work once in a while, but I have done my best to keep to my time restriction.

As with any diet, the first couple of weeks caused me to notice how many commercials feature food, how many people on Pinterest pin recipes, and how many restaurants have late hours.  During those first few days my mind was busy telling me, hey, go ahead and eat something.

One of the funny things I have found going from a 16 hour a day eater to an 8 hour a day eater is that it’s pretty hard to eat as much in 8 hours as I normally eat in 16.  This has lead to a couple of days where I didn’t feel too good as I skipped a meal somewhere in my 8 hours and ended up only eating twice that day.  I have lost a few pounds, but I’m more interested in the whole living longer thing-and only time will tell on that front.

After almost six weeks I have noticed one interesting thing, food tastes substantially better than it used to.   Sweets are sweeter, spicy foods have more bite, and everything just seems richer and fuller.

I’m also doing a small workout when I get up in the morning: 20 crunches, 20 deep knee bends, and 20 pushups.

I tried to read the 8 Hour Diet book, but found it a bit dull and repetitive-after all, all you really need to know is eat in an 8 hour window and fast for 16 hours-how many ways can you say that?

I’m not sure I’ll be up to doing this for the rest of my life, but it is an interesting experiment at the moment.

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